Considering I have been a university student on and off for the last decade, I believe I have become complacent about my academic literacy skills. I earn good grades, in my opinion, and I often receive positive feedback on my academic writing style and my referencing. Whilst I have received some criticisms, it has never occurred to me to analyse my academic literacy skills and make a point of identifying my weaknesses and improving upon them. As my degree progresses, I increasingly need to be able to express myself confidently and clearly and I cannot do that sufficiently until I have refined my writing skills (Grellier & Goerke, 2014, p. 159). Using online proofreading tools was a useful way for me to identify the deficits in my writing style
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It would be beneficial for me to start using timetables and plans for all academic work, to allocate enough time for each task required. I hope that increased time spent planning and editing will allow me to avoid using, or identify and correct, redundant expressions, adverbs and nominalisation as well as ensure I am using a broad, discipline-specific vocabulary. A framework that I will use as a planning scaffold in future academic work is the PROCESS acronym; planning, referencing, organisation of ideas, composition of ideas, engineering of the essay, spelling and structure (Chenery-Morris, 2008, p. 59). I will endeavour to make better use of proofreading services such as the Paper Rater website, which I found to be the most comprehensive and insightful proofreading tool (http://www.paperrater.com). The Smarthinking service offered by Open University would also be beneficial, and the use of the service will rely upon my plan to implement a timetable for academic work, as time needs to be allocated for the submitted piece to be assessed and returned (http://services.smarthinking.com). Improving my academic literacy skills will not only be beneficial to my academic work but will also show consideration to the reader, which is important (Grellier et al., 2014, p. 172;). Hopefully by allocating more time to my academic work and making better use of proofreading services, I can improve the weaknesses currently found in my academic literacy
It would be beneficial for me to start using timetables and plans for all academic work, to allocate enough time for each task required. I hope that increased time spent planning and editing will allow me to avoid using, or identify and correct, redundant expressions, adverbs and nominalisation as well as ensure I am using a broad, discipline-specific vocabulary. A framework that I will use as a planning scaffold in future academic work is the PROCESS acronym; planning, referencing, organisation of ideas, composition of ideas, engineering of the essay, spelling and structure (Chenery-Morris, 2008, p. 59). I will endeavour to make better use of proofreading services such as the Paper Rater website, which I found to be the most comprehensive and insightful proofreading tool (http://www.paperrater.com). The Smarthinking service offered by Open University would also be beneficial, and the use of the service will rely upon my plan to implement a timetable for academic work, as time needs to be allocated for the submitted piece to be assessed and returned (http://services.smarthinking.com). Improving my academic literacy skills will not only be beneficial to my academic work but will also show consideration to the reader, which is important (Grellier et al., 2014, p. 172;). Hopefully by allocating more time to my academic work and making better use of proofreading services, I can improve the weaknesses currently found in my academic literacy